Breaking
by Tawnya Kisaragi
Summary: There was a lot of lab space that never got explored, so it stood to reason something else might be lost in there with them. There was, and it struck in the one place few would ever be able to reach. Too bad it chose to target the one troll who's moirail could hear madness, a best friend who was a powerful psionic, and all three were known for their stubbornness issues.


Another one of those descriptions for a picture that got carried away with itself. Said picture is now available on my tumbler account under grimreaperchibi, post/43708219344/breaking-art.

EDIT: A lot of people have commented that it's kind of confusing in parts. Well, that's because the two major contributors to this, my matesprit and myself, were in the middle of an insomniac week. The majority of this was literally written one night on like a total of 8 hours of sleep for the past three days. So I'm sure there are points were everything kind of blurs together, but I also think it works for the subject matter at hand. Thanks for understanding.

~Tawnya

* * *

_Captor…_

The voice pulls you forward, deeper into halls you're pretty sure no one has been down since the place was abandoned. Shit, this has turned in a right fucking mess. You don't know what these little monstrosities are, or where they came from, but they are proving to be a pain in the ass. They aren't strong, almost nothing more than some vile fluid encased in darkness, and a single sweep of psionic energy makes it pretty easy to destroy them in high numbers before those very real claws manage to do anything except click on the floor. They just keep crawling out of the metal-work in ever-increasing numbers. Or maybe you're getting closer to where they're coming from? You're pretty sure most of the rest of the group can handle themselves. That voice, though…

_CAPTOR!_

…something's obviously wrong. Not many call you by your last name. Those that would are usually easy to recognize, even through a telepathic link (especially since there are only a couple of the others even capable of it). This voice is completely unfamiliar. And the tone is wrong: it's not quite panic, but it's getting there fast. And you haven't found Karkat yet, the whole reason you're trying to swim through these damn apparitions. No one has seen him, in fact, since before these things began streaming up from who the fuck knows where. He hasn't responded to any sort of trolling and now is one of the times when you all really your fearless leader around. You know he's one of the most capable fighters in the group, but you still find yourself hoping the idiot hasn't gotten himself into trouble.

You're checking rooms as you go, paying less and less attention to what you're actually seeing. Thinking of KK causes an odd thrum to go through you, so you pick up the pace. His voice hasn't started echoing in the back of your mind, so you can at least be assured he's not dying somewhere. That isn't much of a comfort, however, as the swipes of brilliant red start appearing on the walls, the floor. Even with a marked path, it's still several minutes before you find him. Apparently several minutes too late. You know he isn't in imminent danger, but seeing him with blood dripping from his chest and arms is still unnerving as all hell. You gather power to burn away every living thing in the room as anger surges through you—

—and then it dies away just as quickly, tightening into a ball of fear as a soft "honk" echoes next to your ear. Oh, shit.

"Took you long enough, motherfucker. Too long. Pale-bro's fading, going away."

Shit, triple shit, goddamn it, fucking hell, and fuck you with a spoon right in the aural sponge. You clamp down on the instincts that say "run you moron" to turn and look at Gamzee instead. Gamzee, who's devastatingly sober. His eyes have gone hard and as dark as deepest space despite glowing in the poor lighting. The spatters of red across his face and hair only seem to make them glow more. He was smiling, emphasis on was. As the corners of this mouth soften into a more neutral position, you can feel the weight of his anger bearing down on you, getting heavier with every second you just stare.

His teeth show as he snarls at you, jutting his head towards Karkat. "Bro needs help. I can't find him, only hear him. He's too loud. You gotta find him, make him quiet."

"But KK's right…" Actually saying "here" makes you realize something more is wrong. He's right there, curled protectively in the corner, but he's not making a sound. Not even a whimper, which is odd considering the amount of red coming off of him. He should at the least be swearing, if not actively pitching a fit about it. Small sets of eyes start appearing in the shadows, distracting you. Whatever is wrong with Karkat isn't life threatening. It can wait until this threat is disposed of.

Gamzee's club thunks you in the back of head, just hard enough to hurt. "The fuck, Gamz…."

You don't get to finish the sentence. You don't even get to make another noise as an impossibly large hand wraps around your throat and you get hauled bodily back to the corner Karkat's in, where you are dumped unceremoniously next to him.

"Bring him back, motherfucker. He's too loud; he's screaming. Don't tell me you can't hear him screaming, cuz I'm gonna call you a motherfucking liar, motherfucker. He's screaming and hurting and I can't bring him back, can't motherfucking shoosh him down. You have to. I…I can't do it. Don't motherfucking let him become _me. Bro don't deserve that."_

The speech, despite its vehemence, is softly spoken. So much passion under a serene façade, just like everything else Gamzee does. It's still a struggle to convince yourself to turn away from him, though. Actually placing your hands on Karkat helps—he's still warm, which is good, but his eyes aren't reacting, which is bad. He has no natural psionics himself, and thus no defenses against them, so you have to be exceptionally careful when you reach out and try to touch him with your mind. There's…nothing. Just absolute silence. It should be a mess, with half thoughts and memories and images floating about without much of a sense of order. You search carefully, poking at the overly smooth texture of your friend's mind until you run into something that lets you go no further. It's almost…almost like a wall is in the way, which is in no way right. A more frantic search and you find a slight "crack" in the barrier to gently push through.

You don't remember throwing yourself away, but your back is against Gamzee's legs and your hands are clamped over your ears, as if that could somehow block the awful screaming now echoing through your think-pan. Pain beyond pain, ripping, tearing, shredding over and over again—it's worse than death scream of Alternia. Almost worse than the Vast Glub that finally ended it all. Gamzee kneels next to you. There's an unhappy look in his eyes and a twitch in his hands, and he's obviously having a hard time not clubbing you in the head. While the protective streak is sweet, it's so not comforting right now.

"I know it ain't his voice all up in your head. And that's great, but I can hear him in mine. I don't want the motherfucker in my head. You gotta get him out, motherfucker."

Madness. You hear death, the voices of those whose time is coming shortly to an end. Gamzee hears madness. Oh, motherfuck…

"How?" Such a simple question, such a loaded question, and the only thing you can think to ask. Gamzee just shakes his head as he stands. His shoulders pop as he adjusts them, twirling the clubs in his hands.

"Bro was already breaking when I found him. I can't find him in the noise."

You nod as you pull Karkat close, wrapping around him as best you can. Behind Gamzee, you can see eyes glowing in the darkness. A lot of eyes. Doesn't this just keeps getting better?

"Gamzee…"

He waves you off, that awful smile that never reaches the rest of his face returning as he turns to take on the new threat. "I got the rainbow, motherfucker. You get my bro back."

You can't see him as he starts to attack, which is probably just as well. You have your own battle to fight as you push into Karkat's mind and try to save something already so fragile.

You are Sollux Captor, and you are so totally in over your head.

X-X-X

It's a little easier the second time, knowing what's coming. The sound still shreds something inside you. At the risk of overwhelming whatever might be left, you build a shield around yourself. It helps, not enough to cancel the noise completely, but enough to stop scrambling your own thoughts and feelings so that you can do what you need to. First of which is to secure yourself on both sides of the wall. Whatever built this barricade didn't want to be found, didn't want what's left of Karkat to be found, so there's no knowing if this access point is going to stick around once you're found out. That means that you're going to have split your attention, leaving the "real" you on the outside while a "shadow" you investigates inside. It, unfortunately, also means that you can't keep track of what's happening outside your body anymore. You're just going to have to trust that Gamzee can handle everything out there. You could push for three versions, but then you'd lose the stability and dexterity of two well-controlled selves. There's no point in just crashing around and causing more damage.

And there's lots of damage. When you finally get settled and actually start looking around, you're kind of surprised there's still enough left of your friend to scream the way he is. The mental landscape, which reminds you of his in-game world, has been ripped asunder. There used to be order here, looking at the remnants. Memories lined up well, thoughts are in not necessarily straight, but like lines. Grey, black, red…it mixes in precise patterns that you can follow. It probably shouldn't surprise you; KK's pretty damn meticulous when he wants to be. He can bring up shit to throw in someone's face from years ago to prove any point he wants. You're not going to be able to give him flack for his lack of forethought anymore. He doesn't lack it, he's just too impatient to see it through. If you can get him back out, that is…

It's like a huge set of claws reached in and raked through it all. Something rummaged around in Karkat's think-pan and then ripped what they wanted out. Things are broken, shattered, left laying and discard because it wasn't the right piece, like a smash and grab robbery of the mind. It was very quick (and thus probably exceedingly painful) and without any finesse, obviously done with pointed intent, but looking for what exactly? You can't tell. There's nothing solid truly solid left to look at. All you can do is drift in further.

Memory, thought, physical action and reaction are all sort of located together, near the surface. Though there can be some derivation from one person to the next, what usually comes next is the instinctual section of the mind. It's darker here, which is to be expected. Instinct is faster than thought, faster than reflex. When rational and context are stripped away, instinct is what keeps you alive. The sheer baseness of instinct means that it is both darker and more simplistic to observe. What were once solid pillars that kept the central self safe are now cracked and worn, the blackness of the once stalwart walls now weeps with bright red instead of containing it. There was a fight here, hard, vicious, and so KK it almost hurts more now to hear that pitiful scream that's never going to leave your head after this. He fought so hard here against whatever invaded his mind; you can see the dance play out in the cuts and fractures left behind. Vaulting here, slashing there, holding nothing back in the defense of his core self even though he had to be in agony after the rape of his conscious mind. Stupid, stubborn crab…

You don't want to move on because next is the core. You already feel like you've come too far, pushed a violation that has already run so deep. There isn't a choice. The conscious self was ripped apart. The instinctive self was beaten down. All that's left to torture is the core of Karkat, and for as badly as you want to stop that sound, you don't want to know what's causing it in the first place.

The door that leads to that inner most part isn't hard to find. It almost isn't there anymore to begin with. That desecration pisses you off more than anything. That something has forced its way this deeply and this violently makes you tremble with rage because _Karkat isn't a psionic. An attack like this makes sense for someone like you, someone who could fight back and prove problematic. There was never a need to do any of this because there was never a meaningful enough defense against invasion in the first place. It's all cruelty and spite, forceful subjugation for the sake of proving it possible. Not even Vriska's that petty._

Everything's bleeding past the crumbled doors, raw, inflamed, and trembling in pain. You want to reach out and soothe it, but know you'll only be inflicting more damage. Whatever it is that's done this has driven him back, deep within himself, deeper than it's safe to go. Suddenly Gamzee's warning about not letting Karkat become like him makes sense. If the core self goes too deep, pulls too far away from the rest of the mind, then they'll disconnect and never be able to match up again. You ignore your previous sense of impropriety and move faster, no longer caring about catching the notice of whatever's done all this. In fact, a part of you wants it to notice, turn to you, fight with you so that you can tear it apart just as it has torn apart your friend.

The feeling only gets worse when you finally find him. He hasn't gone too deep, not yet, and considering he's chained up in the first place, you highly doubt madness is where this was supposed to end. It looks like the waking world's Karkat, all nubby horns and stocky build, but your KK never looked small before even though he's one of the shortest of the group. He's been stretch out in shackles just loose enough to allow him to thrash, to let him hurt himself even as he tries to escape the torment around him, which a circle of shadows does rather gleefully. They're shouting words at him, words that cut themselves into skin that ruptures so easily, like he's barely finished stepping out of the chrysalis. _Worthless. Expendable. Disappointment. No, not cut, but burned, flashing white hot before bleeding red and fading into the ultimate tangle of tissue that's left behind. __Useless. Pathetic. Loser. You try to get closer, try to break the circle, but for all your hate, you can't get far. __Stupid. Good-for-nothing. Dysfunctional. There's blood pouring from his lips, and if this was a waking version then it would be amazing he can still make sound at all, but it's not and it just doesn't stop. __Inadequate. Hopeless. Failure._

And then you realize it's _you who's burning those words into Karkat's very essence. It's all of you turning in that taunting circle, everyone one in the group. There, a flash of a symbol, the coloration of an eye or horn, mixed and swirled together into just enough indistinct form that there's never just one point of focus, but always enough to know who's inflicting the hurt. That's what this darkness was looking for in his conscious mind—fear. And not just any fear, but a fear he couldn't defend himself from. It would have been buried deep under the memories and thoughts that consume daily life. It would have been a weapon no amount of instinct could overcome. It would chain him and burn him until he literally fell to pieces._

Because nothing means more to KK than his friends. Not even his own life.

You pull back, hating to leave him there, but needing your full concentration to take that first step in actually freeing him. You're vaguely aware that there's blood on your face as you snap back into your body before shooting out again. There's no time to be neat or polite, you just barge into the minds of everyone with a simple command: best moment with Karkat. The response is relatively quick, giving you little shining things that you grab up before moving on to the next person. Vriska's the one you have to press the hardest for an answer and Gamzee has one waiting for you. Then you're back in again with ten points of light circling around you and enough anger that the blow you deliver to that blank outer shield disintegrates it. You dive fast and deep, still careful not inflict more damage even as you push the whole of yourself into the action. Time means nothing inside the mind, so there's no way of knowing how long you've already taken to get this far or how long it's going to be before there was one wound too many.

The shadows try to rise up against you, but they're even feebler than their real world counterparts, nothing but smoke and dust. They disappear before they even get close, blown away by the force you carry. When you get back to the place Karkat's become trapped in, the circle finally starts breaking into individuals. The first one, a shadow of Aradia, comes screaming towards you, _murderer already streaking through the air between the two of you. It get's cut off mid-air by your own memory (__"The thing I want more than anything else is for you to be happy, Sollux, even if it's never with me.") and then the apparition itself is cut down by the rust coloured light of the memory she provided. Two more, Nepeta and then Equius, break away and are snuffed out of existence the same way. Vriska, Eridan, Kanaya. Fuchsia and bronze, teal and purple. Light for shadow, taking away hurt with love and pity. The shadow of you doesn't even try to attack; it merely dissolves away when you draw near to release Karkat from his bonds._

There's one bit of blackness still left, tough. One word of hate and loathing still exists, trying to burn even as you pull him down into your arms and offer protection. You're bleeding into his mind now, which is all sorts of bad and complicated, suffering under those blows as much as he is even as you try to pull him back and away from it. You can't take him too far too fast or saving him will have meant nothing. No matter how you hold him, however, that self-destroying _Failurecontinues to skitter around both of you, hot and condemning as it lashes out. Because the one person you'd never be able to save KK from is himself._

But you don't have to. Not alone, at least. There's not much left of those brilliant memories you brought to sever the ring of pain, just glittering fragments after most of the energy was expended breaking apart the fears that were never true. There's enough, though, to sweep around him and make them live again. Suddenly it's not just you holding on and shielding him, but Gamzee as well, and Terezi. Everyone else is standing in defense, weapons drawn and ready for the fight. It's kind of surprising that Eridan takes the first retaliatory shot, or maybe not, and Feferi's not far behind him, nor is Nepeta_. Invaluable, irreplaceable, worthwhile. One after another, all of you take your shot at the worst abuser. It's never enough individually to destroy it out right, but you're definitely inflicting damage to it en masse, making it crack under the ever-increasing pressure of all the good Karkat has brought into your lives. __Resourceful, competent, passionate, blessing. As the words wear down that dark other, they're also healing the wounds their opposites inflicted. Not perfectly, there're still scabs and scars left behind and always will be, but he's no longer hemorrhaging out or in screaming agony because of them. __Defender, capable, inspiring, encouraging. _

Now their positions have switched, with KK the one who's strong and standing while the shadow succumbs to the onslaught and bleeds. Not quite strong enough to stand completely on his own, but you're still strong enough to help him get where he needs to be. You both tower over what's left of that lingering fear, and as much as you want to burn it away with all the force still left in you, it's still Karkat's horror and he's the only one who can ultimately destroy it. He stares at it long enough that you're half afraid that you managed to help too little too late. Then his lip curls in the familiar scowl of disdain as he reaches out and flicks the final word at the thing with vehement force.

_Accomplished__._

It shouldn't be so satisfying to watch something explode.

For awhile after, all either of you can do is sag against each other. You know you should be trying to get him moving, pulling him if necessary back to the physical world because god knows how long you've really been at this and whether or not there's still enough of Gamzee's sanity left to bring him back around to. The most you manage is to just hang on, tired and drained and vaguely wondering if you still have a functioning body to eventually return to yourself. Sooner than later, though, he's able to pull away from you, just enough to get a good old fashioned KK death glare going.

_"Sollux, get the fuck out of my head."_

You can't help it; a raspy chuckle forces itself out and whoa, holy fuck, that hurts like hell, so you must not be dead yet either. That worry now sorted out, you decide to be contrary and pull him back to you. _"Only if you come with me."_

_"Where the hell else am I going to go, fuckass?" The question makes you both flinch even as relief for the return of that stubborn snark floods through as well. It's still way too early to make jokes like that. Karkat looks moderately ashamed to have said it in the first place. __"I'm… I'll follow. Get out of here before you really do die and I'm left with your ghost in my think-pan for the rest of this miserable fucking escapade."_

He might be left with an afterimage whether he wants it or not, given the stains of yellow you've left here and there in your effort to defend him. That's a problem for later, when you're not so exhausted and strung out. Slowly, you start pulling yourself back, as much to make sure he's following you back out as it is because you lack the simple power to reconnect any faster. He doesn't fuss at you too much about the how long the process takes. Everything is starting to repair itself now that his core self is functioning again. It'll take time to truly recover, but it's an uplifting thing to see nonetheless. The two of you teeter and wobble back to the very edges of consciousness, where he gives you one last, gentle shove out of his mental space.

The pain is actually enough that you kind of wish you'd died. There's a headache that's threatening to split your head in half crackling between your horns. You've got blood steadily running from your nose and ears and have for a while given how light-headed and nauseous you feel. Movement makes you groan in pain, only it's not so much a groan as it's a wheeze that turns into a cough that's horribly wet and makes your chest seize up. Oh, you tore yourself up good this time, but it's worth it to feel that blast furnace that's your friend and leader wrap his hands around your face and force you to look up. It takes a little too long to focus in on him.

"All right, asshole," he starts when you can finally give him your attention. "We're going to have to move together, so don't you fucking dare pass out on me. I'm not dragging your half-dead carcass anywhere."

Any energy that might have gone into replying has to get spent on getting you back to your feet (Feet? Why the fuck do you have to have feet right now? Oh, yeah, because you'll probably die if you try levitating yourself anytime in the near future.), so the most you manage to get across is a hiss. KK makes it up for you, swearing under his breath as you both struggle upright, nearly dragging one other back down again in the process. You're really pretty numb by the time you're slowly moving through the halls, all the pain receptors in your body finally overloaded to the point of shut-off. Shambling is probably the best way to describe how the two of you work your way up the rainbow road Gamzee's painted through the labs. At least the dark things seem to have stopped pouring out of everywhere because honestly, there's no way either of you could do more than you already are. You're sure there's a significance to the fact that you find the juggalo amid the impressive wreckage of some machine, you just can't figure it out at the moment. You're also pretty sure he's completely lost it at this point, but the moirail magic clicks in as soon as Karkat starts his shooshing routine. Gamzee instantly curls up around him which is just fine with you because that means you no longer have to be standing. The floor is very nicely not moving even if the rest of the room is spinning around.

Mission accomplished. Disaster averted. You pass out.

You can always tell when you've managed to really screw yourself up because this is where you end up. A gently forested area, long sweeping grass on a hill, and the red of a set sun still painting the horizon line—it used to be your favorite spot. It was just so different than the communal hive stems that went on for as far as the eye could see. Different smells, different sounds, different flow to time. Not really a place you could live, but a place that felt good to visit and get away from the normal things for a while.

At least, until you woke up with a headache that made you want to tear out your own horns and the lingering, sparking sweetness of mind honey on your tongue.

There's three parts to a normal mind, but normal minds aren't meant to hold the power of a psionic as strong as you are. You actually have four, the conscious, the subconscious, and the self, plus this place which is a sort of holding area for when your mind is active, but your body isn't able to function yet. At least, that's how it functions from this perspective. You're pretty sure this is actually where all of the emotional backlash feeds into the mental distortion of your powers. It's the place that keeps you going even when you don't want to anymore, where the voices that speak of death whisper on a nonexistent wind, and all the jacked-up hoofbeast shit lingers over the top of all the best things in your life. In short, it's your own personal hell.

Like any scab that you can't help but pick at because the pain fascinates you, you sit up on the hillside and, yup, there's the smoking ruins of Aradia's hive, just like you remember it. Sharp, stinging pain lances through your arm. There's no reason to really look at it anymore, you know what it says, how long it will bleed, what it will take to get it to heal over again, yet you look anyway. What's the point of hurting yourself if you don't look at the destruction, after all?

It's carved into your forearm, _murderer, just like it's been carved a hundred thousand times before, highlighted in your goldenrod blood that always flows so neatly out of the wounds that the word remains unmistakable. That pain lights up about a dozen others in places you're not used to having them. The type of pain is different, too. It radiates, carrying a sting far beyond the initial wound site, and it lingers, fluctuating in intensity, though never truly dissipating. After a little bit of uncomfortable contorting, these newer wounds prove to be burns. Most are simply angry welts raising the skin, but a couple blistered. Remnants of words not meant to harm you specifically, yet found enough purchase to hurt anyway. Failure was never something that scared you. It could be frustrating, disheartening, enraging even, but never frightening. You knew you'd be able to do what you needed to do and very little mattered beyond that._

"_Fuck. And I thought I liked to torture myself."_

A part of you wants desperately to be surprised by the fact that there's now another voice here with you. A very small part is glad that voice isn't screaming here too. The rest of you is simply too tired to feel much of anything, barely flinching when _liiarrips through your side._

"_Everyone's got scars, KK," you respond blithely as you put your shirt back on. The worst ones you bear are on your shoulders and back, things that tend to seep constantly rather than sealing and tearing back open. You don't feel particularly interested in sharing them more than you already have._

He's painfully normal when you finally look to him. Maybe a little more relaxed than you usually see him. His shoulders aren't hunched and those perpetual dark circles around his eyes are the lightest you ever remember them being. He's got that look on his face; the one that says he wants to say something sympathetic yet can't find a way to be obnoxious about it so that you'll take it. You find a moment of envy for the long sleeves of his shirt that effectively hide all the damage you know he's still recovering from.

Karkat looks away first, but the new focus of his attention isn't that much better. "_Is that…?"_

"_Yes." Another wince as the word carves in deeper. You turn to try and hide it, but it's pretty much impossible. He's already seen it._

"_It wasn't your fault."_

"_No. It wasn't." He looks startled that you agreed so readily. You sigh. You've had this argument with so many people by now, you just don't want to fight about it period. Maybe, though, because he's here, he'll understand what you're trying to say. You hold your arm out. "__That doesn't change the fact that I bear the responsibility for it. I have always been the one responsible, not for the intent, but for the action itself. It's just a simple fact, KK. It wasn't my fault; I'm still the one who killed her."_

"_Murderer implies intent, bulge-sucker," Karkat spits back. "__Whose fault is it when I'm playing with my sickle and catch the blade instead of the handle? Yeah, it cut me, but that's what it's supposed to do. It's not the weapon's fault that I'm an idiot. And that's all you were, a weapon, a means to an end, as invested in the outcome as a lump of steel with an edge. **You didn't do anything, intentional, unintentional, or otherwise.**_

_"But…I can understand why you'd still think something stupid like that."_

He's very studiously looking everywhere but at you, trying too hard to act nonchalant about the whole thing. He might have even been able to pull it off, too, if he'd stop fidgeting, his fingers drumming on his crossed arms as he shifts back and forth on his feet. The pain in your arm is receding. The bleeding has stopped even though it has yet to seal itself back up. You can't help but smile at that. It's not even his pain and he still tries (succeeds) to make it better. Sometimes you think he's better at wielding words than he is his sickles, always able to say what you need to hear without making either of you weak in the process. It's probably the main reason you've remained friends as long as you have.

And now he's here, a voice in your head, where only the dead ever talk…

Pain shoots through your other arm with enough sharpness that you yelp despite yourself. Not the pain of your burns or the other words that split or crack, but the slow incising of a new word into your body. It washes over you, hot, liquid, lighting up all the connective abrasions until you feel dizzy and sick. You hug your arm to your stomach, trying to staunch the pain and the blood, curling over it until you end up a ball on the ground that's nothing more than agony. You thought you'd grown numb to this kind of pain. Obviously, you thought wrong.

"_Jesus fuck, Captor." Karkat's got his hands on you, trying to pry you out of the pile of misery you've quickly become. He's warm, which only reinforces how cold you are, how much you want to cling to it, to him. But you also don't want him to see this, how much it hurts to know you gave everything and still couldn't save him. Doesn't matter—in your current condition, you can't fight him off. The fresh wound is exposed as the last few letters start to appear. It's torture, having your arm pressed into the ground, held tight and still as muscles and tendon jump reflexively with each new cut. Karkat uses his own body to block yours, keeping you from folding over this new hurt, watching the process no matter how much you don't want him to._

You're breathless by the time it finally stops, disoriented and trembling and wishing you could just pass out properly instead of having to lay in this fucked up part of your head and hurt like this. When you stop fighting him, Karkat gentles his hold. Actually, it's probably shock on his part more than anything, given how his eyes are wide and his mouth is open to say something, but hasn't actually made a sound yet. You can't really blame him for it. He did just watch an invisible knife deliberately cut the word _betrayer into the hitherto unmarred skin of your opposite forearm._

"_I'm sorry…" It burbles out of your throat without thought, followed by that little throb as more blood pushes out of your newly ruptured skin. "__I'm so sorry, KK…"_

That seems to snap him back. Slate grey eyes narrow down at you. "_What. The actual. Fuck. Is this."_

It isn't said as a question. You lack the will to fight him about it, though. "_I was supposed to save you. Gamzee fucking called me out to do it. But if you're here, then I obviously didn't, and now you're dying. The one thing I should have been able to do to help you and I—"_

"_Whoa. Back up." He actually puts a hand over your mouth to stop you. "__No one's dead, nookstain. You certainly gave it your best fucking shot, though. Gamzee and I had to haul your ass half way across the goddamn meteor, by the way, so you better be fucking grateful we didn't leave you where you oh-so-conveniently decided to pass out. We got you cleaned up and resting in a pile, and then you started making this weird as fuck noise in my head. I touched you and then I was here. End of story."_

A noise. How could he hear… That's right. You had left smears of your blood behind when you dove into his mind, left a little bit of yourself behind inside him. And in your fury and haste, you hadn't shielded yourself, had poured all of your mental self into what you were doing…which had left you covered in his blood when you had pulled him down and tried to protect him from himself. Of course the mental impression Karkat created would be bigger, stronger, more defined than the one you'd left behind. The pain recedes, leaving you rather numb in the wake of everything.

"_This is fucking stupid, even for you." Karkat's voice as gone soft, but his grip on your arm has tightened. "__Why the hell would you even think something like this? **How could you? You waltzed in and made me look like a fucking chump in my own goddamn head, for fuck's sake. You pulled enough of everyone else in to get the damn voices to stop, and then took the next step by trying to save me from myself, like you couldn't resist rubbing in the fact ****you had to save ****me. And now you want to pull this self-incrimination shit? Well, fuck you, Sollux, right up your bifurcated ass, because if you think I'm just going to roll over and die without doing anything to set the record straight, then you're an even bigger douche than I gave you credit for. Suck it up, fucknub; you're not getting out of payback so easily. Because this, this is utter ****shit."**_

His hand clamps down on the wound and angrily wipes it away. It should have hurt, and it doesn't. The whole thing should have torn open to the bone, and it didn't. Blood should be gushing from your arm, and it isn't. There's nothing, no wound, no scar, and barely any trace of blood left along the stretch of skin between your wrist and your elbow. KK's still glaring at you, though, a tale-tell red rimming his eyes.

"_Don't you dare use me as a weapon against yourself," he snarls.__ "Hate yourself all you want, you lisping son of a bitch, but don't you dare use me to hurt you. Otherwise, I **will hurt you, and this little foray into self-mutilation will be a fucking joy by the time I'm done with you."**_

The hot anger is scalding as it pours over you, warming you back up, and you're vaguely surprised not to see steam rising. Your body starts to relax. Your thoughts start flowing again. And then you really can't help yourself. After a tirade like that, it comes as naturally as breathing. "_Jeez, KK. If you wanted a black date that badly, you could have just asked in the first place."_

There's a moment of shock, then he's sitting up and scowling. "_Ridiculous. You've absolutely fucking gone off the deep end, haven't you? Why the hell do I even bother…" His grumbling only makes you snicker harder, but you know he's pleased by the result because he keeps egging you on. It's only then that you realize you've missed this. The teasing, the baiting, the arguing. He's been too busy being the leader and you've been too busy trying not to be involved. The utter normalcy of the situation finishes warming you up. Your body finally unfolds, allowing you to sit up. He watches you with a mixture of annoyance and relief. "__Are we done yet?" he asks petulantly. "__Because dealing with your insanity is fucking exhausting and I don't know how to get back."_

You grin and lurch forward, grabbing him. First, he swears at you because of the action, then he swears at you because there's nothing solid around you anymore. He does a full body cling as you bring the both of you back to consciousness, idle threats trailing behind like vapours. It's easy to find his point of contact and while you're tempted to just hurl him back in the right direction, you're also in a good enough mood to be nice about the process. Once you convince him to uncling, you set him on his way with an even gentler push than he gave you out of his mind, watching until your sure he's made it before ascending the rest of the way yourself.

The room you wake to isn't one that you recognize immediately. It hurts to breath, your head is steadily throbbing in time with your blood pusher, and you're laying on something that's soft enough your spine feels stretched out like taffy. Shifting hurts, but it's then that you feel claws digging lightly into your hand. Your head turns a bit to see Karkat laying next to you, watching you intently. He looks even more exhausted than he usually does, with dried splatters of blood still clinging to his pale gray skin. Gamzee is asleep on his chest, snoring away with little honks at the end of each breath, one of Karkat's hands buried in his hair, absently stroking to keep the sleeping easy.

"Are we still friends?" he asks quietly, nearly whispering, and you think that's all the sound he can manage right now in the waking world.

"Yeah, KK. We're still friends." You squeeze his hand. "Thanks."

He finally relaxes a bit, eyes drifting closed. "_Anytime, fuckass," rings in the back of your mind, and for the first time, having a voice there doesn't seem like a bad thing._

* * *

Owari

_Captor…_

The voice pulls you forward, deeper into halls you're pretty sure no one has been down since the place was abandoned. Shit, this has turned in a right fucking mess. You don't know what these little monstrosities are, or where they came from, but they are proving to be a pain in the ass. They aren't strong, almost nothing more than some vile fluid encased in darkness, and a single sweep of psionic energy makes it pretty easy to destroy them in high numbers before those very real claws manage to do anything except click on the floor. They just keep crawling out of the metal-work in ever-increasing numbers. Or maybe you're getting closer to where they're coming from? You're pretty sure most of the rest of the group can handle themselves. That voice, though…

_CAPTOR!_

…something's obviously wrong. Not many call you by your last name. Those that would are usually easy to recognize, even through a telepathic link (especially since there are only a couple of the others even capable of it). This voice is completely unfamiliar. And the tone is wrong: it's not quite panic, but it's getting there fast. And you haven't found Karkat yet, the whole reason you're trying to swim through these damn apparitions. No one has seen him, in fact, since before these things began streaming up from who the fuck knows where. He hasn't responded to any sort of trolling and now is one of the times when you all really your fearless leader around. You know he's one of the most capable fighters in the group, but you still find yourself hoping the idiot hasn't gotten himself into trouble.

You're checking rooms as you go, paying less and less attention to what you're actually seeing. Thinking of KK causes an odd thrum to go through you, so you pick up the pace. His voice hasn't started echoing in the back of your mind, so you can at least be assured he's not dying somewhere. That isn't much of a comfort, however, as the swipes of brilliant red start appearing on the walls, the floor. Even with a marked path, it's still several minutes before you find him. Apparently several minutes too late. You know he isn't in imminent danger, but seeing him with blood dripping from his chest and arms is still unnerving as all hell. You gather power to burn away every living thing in the room as anger surges through you—

—and then it dies away just as quickly, tightening into a ball of fear as a soft "honk" echoes next to your ear. Oh, shit.

"Took you long enough, motherfucker. Too long. Pale-bro's fading, going away."

Shit, triple shit, goddamn it, fucking hell, and fuck you with a spoon right in the aural sponge. You clamp down on the instincts that say "run you moron" to turn and look at Gamzee instead. Gamzee, who's devastatingly sober. His eyes have gone hard and as dark as deepest space despite glowing in the poor lighting. The spatters of red across his face and hair only seem to make them glow more. He was smiling, emphasis on was. As the corners of this mouth soften into a more neutral position, you can feel the weight of his anger bearing down on you, getting heavier with every second you just stare.

His teeth show as he snarls at you, jutting his head towards Karkat. "Bro needs help. I can't find him, only hear him. He's too loud. You gotta find him, make him quiet."

"But KK's right…" Actually saying "here" makes you realize something more is wrong. He's right there, curled protectively in the corner, but he's not making a sound. Not even a whimper, which is odd considering the amount of red coming off of him. He should at the least be swearing, if not actively pitching a fit about it. Small sets of eyes start appearing in the shadows, distracting you. Whatever is wrong with Karkat isn't life threatening. It can wait until this threat is disposed of.

Gamzee's club thunks you in the back of head, just hard enough to hurt. "The fuck, Gamz…."

You don't get to finish the sentence. You don't even get to make another noise as an impossibly large hand wraps around your throat and you get hauled bodily back to the corner Karkat's in, where you are dumped unceremoniously next to him.

"Bring him back, motherfucker. He's too loud; he's screaming. Don't tell me you can't hear him screaming, cuz I'm gonna call you a motherfucking liar, motherfucker. He's screaming and hurting and I can't bring him back, can't motherfucking shoosh him down. You have to. I…I can't do it. Don't motherfucking let him become _me. Bro don't deserve that."_

The speech, despite its vehemence, is softly spoken. So much passion under a serene façade, just like everything else Gamzee does. It's still a struggle to convince yourself to turn away from him, though. Actually placing your hands on Karkat helps—he's still warm, which is good, but his eyes aren't reacting, which is bad. He has no natural psionics himself, and thus no defenses against them, so you have to be exceptionally careful when you reach out and try to touch him with your mind. There's…nothing. Just absolute silence. It should be a mess, with half thoughts and memories and images floating about without much of a sense of order. You search carefully, poking at the overly smooth texture of your friend's mind until you run into something that lets you go no further. It's almost…almost like a wall is in the way, which is in no way right. A more frantic search and you find a slight "crack" in the barrier to gently push through.

You don't remember throwing yourself away, but your back is against Gamzee's legs and your hands are clamped over your ears, as if that could somehow block the awful screaming now echoing through your think-pan. Pain beyond pain, ripping, tearing, shredding over and over again—it's worse than death scream of Alternia. Almost worse than the Vast Glub that finally ended it all. Gamzee kneels next to you. There's an unhappy look in his eyes and a twitch in his hands, and he's obviously having a hard time not clubbing you in the head. While the protective streak is sweet, it's so not comforting right now.

"I know it ain't his voice all up in your head. And that's great, but I can hear him in mine. I don't want the motherfucker in my head. You gotta get him out, motherfucker."

Madness. You hear death, the voices of those whose time is coming shortly to an end. Gamzee hears madness. Oh, motherfuck…

"How?" Such a simple question, such a loaded question, and the only thing you can think to ask. Gamzee just shakes his head as he stands. His shoulders pop as he adjusts them, twirling the clubs in his hands.

"Bro was already breaking when I found him. I can't find him in the noise."

You nod as you pull Karkat close, wrapping around him as best you can. Behind Gamzee, you can see eyes glowing in the darkness. A lot of eyes. Doesn't this just keeps getting better?

"Gamzee…"

He waves you off, that awful smile that never reaches the rest of his face returning as he turns to take on the new threat. "I got the rainbow, motherfucker. You get my bro back."

You can't see him as he starts to attack, which is probably just as well. You have your own battle to fight as you push into Karkat's mind and try to save something already so fragile.

You are Sollux Captor, and you are so totally in over your head.

It's a little easier the second time, knowing what's coming. The sound still shreds something inside you. At the risk of overwhelming whatever might be left, you build a shield around yourself. It helps, not enough to cancel the noise completely, but enough to stop scrambling your own thoughts and feelings so that you can do what you need to. First of which is to secure yourself on both sides of the wall. Whatever built this barricade didn't want to be found, didn't want what's left of Karkat to be found, so there's no knowing if this access point is going to stick around once you're found out. That means that you're going to have split your attention, leaving the "real" you on the outside while a "shadow" you investigates inside. It, unfortunately, also means that you can't keep track of what's happening outside your body anymore. You're just going to have to trust that Gamzee can handle everything out there. You could push for three versions, but then you'd lose the stability and dexterity of two well-controlled selves. There's no point in just crashing around and causing more damage.

And there's lots of damage. When you finally get settled and actually start looking around, you're kind of surprised there's still enough left of your friend to scream the way he is. The mental landscape, which reminds you of his in-game world, has been ripped asunder. There used to be order here, looking at the remnants. Memories lined up well, thoughts are in not necessarily straight, but like lines. Grey, black, red…it mixes in precise patterns that you can follow. It probably shouldn't surprise you; KK's pretty damn meticulous when he wants to be. He can bring up shit to throw in someone's face from years ago to prove any point he wants. You're not going to be able to give him flack for his lack of forethought anymore. He doesn't lack it, he's just too impatient to see it through. If you can get him back out, that is…

It's like a huge set of claws reached in and raked through it all. Something rummaged around in Karkat's think-pan and then ripped what they wanted out. Things are broken, shattered, left laying and discard because it wasn't the right piece, like a smash and grab robbery of the mind. It was very quick (and thus probably exceedingly painful) and without any finesse, obviously done with pointed intent, but looking for what exactly? You can't tell. There's nothing solid truly solid left to look at. All you can do is drift in further.

Memory, thought, physical action and reaction are all sort of located together, near the surface. Though there can be some derivation from one person to the next, what usually comes next is the instinctual section of the mind. It's darker here, which is to be expected. Instinct is faster than thought, faster than reflex. When rational and context are stripped away, instinct is what keeps you alive. The sheer baseness of instinct means that it is both darker and more simplistic to observe. What were once solid pillars that kept the central self safe are now cracked and worn, the blackness of the once stalwart walls now weeps with bright red instead of containing it. There was a fight here, hard, vicious, and so KK it almost hurts more now to hear that pitiful scream that's never going to leave your head after this. He fought so hard here against whatever invaded his mind; you can see the dance play out in the cuts and fractures left behind. Vaulting here, slashing there, holding nothing back in the defense of his core self even though he had to be in agony after the rape of his conscious mind. Stupid, stubborn crab…

You don't want to move on because next is the core. You already feel like you've come too far, pushed a violation that has already run so deep. There isn't a choice. The conscious self was ripped apart. The instinctive self was beaten down. All that's left to torture is the core of Karkat, and for as badly as you want to stop that sound, you don't want to know what's causing it in the first place.

The door that leads to that inner most part isn't hard to find. It almost isn't there anymore to begin with. That desecration pisses you off more than anything. That something has forced its way this deeply and this violently makes you tremble with rage because _Karkat isn't a psionic. An attack like this makes sense for someone like you, someone who could fight back and prove problematic. There was never a need to do any of this because there was never a meaningful enough defense against invasion in the first place. It's all cruelty and spite, forceful subjugation for the sake of proving it possible. Not even Vriska's that petty._

Everything's bleeding past the crumbled doors, raw, inflamed, and trembling in pain. You want to reach out and soothe it, but know you'll only be inflicting more damage. Whatever it is that's done this has driven him back, deep within himself, deeper than it's safe to go. Suddenly Gamzee's warning about not letting Karkat become like him makes sense. If the core self goes too deep, pulls too far away from the rest of the mind, then they'll disconnect and never be able to match up again. You ignore your previous sense of impropriety and move faster, no longer caring about catching the notice of whatever's done all this. In fact, a part of you wants it to notice, turn to you, fight with you so that you can tear it apart just as it has torn apart your friend.

The feeling only gets worse when you finally find him. He hasn't gone too deep, not yet, and considering he's chained up in the first place, you highly doubt madness is where this was supposed to end. It looks like the waking world's Karkat, all nubby horns and stocky build, but your KK never looked small before even though he's one of the shortest of the group. He's been stretch out in shackles just loose enough to allow him to thrash, to let him hurt himself even as he tries to escape the torment around him, which a circle of shadows does rather gleefully. They're shouting words at him, words that cut themselves into skin that ruptures so easily, like he's barely finished stepping out of the chrysalis. _Worthless. Expendable. Disappointment. No, not cut, but burned, flashing white hot before bleeding red and fading into the ultimate tangle of tissue that's left behind. __Useless. Pathetic. Loser. You try to get closer, try to break the circle, but for all your hate, you can't get far. __Stupid. Good-for-nothing. Dysfunctional. There's blood pouring from his lips, and if this was a waking version then it would be amazing he can still make sound at all, but it's not and it just doesn't stop. __Inadequate. Hopeless. Failure._

And then you realize it's _you who's burning those words into Karkat's very essence. It's all of you turning in that taunting circle, everyone one in the group. There, a flash of a symbol, the coloration of an eye or horn, mixed and swirled together into just enough indistinct form that there's never just one point of focus, but always enough to know who's inflicting the hurt. That's what this darkness was looking for in his conscious mind—fear. And not just any fear, but a fear he couldn't defend himself from. It would have been buried deep under the memories and thoughts that consume daily life. It would have been a weapon no amount of instinct could overcome. It would chain him and burn him until he literally fell to pieces._

Because nothing means more to KK than his friends. Not even his own life.

You pull back, hating to leave him there, but needing your full concentration to take that first step in actually freeing him. You're vaguely aware that there's blood on your face as you snap back into your body before shooting out again. There's no time to be neat or polite, you just barge into the minds of everyone with a simple command: best moment with Karkat. The response is relatively quick, giving you little shining things that you grab up before moving on to the next person. Vriska's the one you have to press the hardest for an answer and Gamzee has one waiting for you. Then you're back in again with ten points of light circling around you and enough anger that the blow you deliver to that blank outer shield disintegrates it. You dive fast and deep, still careful not inflict more damage even as you push the whole of yourself into the action. Time means nothing inside the mind, so there's no way of knowing how long you've already taken to get this far or how long it's going to be before there was one wound too many.

The shadows try to rise up against you, but they're even feebler than their real world counterparts, nothing but smoke and dust. They disappear before they even get close, blown away by the force you carry. When you get back to the place Karkat's become trapped in, the circle finally starts breaking into individuals. The first one, a shadow of Aradia, comes screaming towards you, _murderer already streaking through the air between the two of you. It get's cut off mid-air by your own memory (__"The thing I want more than anything else is for you to be happy, Sollux, even if it's never with me.") and then the apparition itself is cut down by the rust coloured light of the memory she provided. Two more, Nepeta and then Equius, break away and are snuffed out of existence the same way. Vriska, Eridan, Kanaya. Fuchsia and bronze, teal and purple. Light for shadow, taking away hurt with love and pity. The shadow of you doesn't even try to attack; it merely dissolves away when you draw near to release Karkat from his bonds._

There's one bit of blackness still left, tough. One word of hate and loathing still exists, trying to burn even as you pull him down into your arms and offer protection. You're bleeding into his mind now, which is all sorts of bad and complicated, suffering under those blows as much as he is even as you try to pull him back and away from it. You can't take him too far too fast or saving him will have meant nothing. No matter how you hold him, however, that self-destroying _Failurecontinues to skitter around both of you, hot and condemning as it lashes out. Because the one person you'd never be able to save KK from is himself._

But you don't have to. Not alone, at least. There's not much left of those brilliant memories you brought to sever the ring of pain, just glittering fragments after most of the energy was expended breaking apart the fears that were never true. There's enough, though, to sweep around him and make them live again. Suddenly it's not just you holding on and shielding him, but Gamzee as well, and Terezi. Everyone else is standing in defense, weapons drawn and ready for the fight. It's kind of surprising that Eridan takes the first retaliatory shot, or maybe not, and Feferi's not far behind him, nor is Nepeta_. Invaluable, irreplaceable, worthwhile. One after another, all of you take your shot at the worst abuser. It's never enough individually to destroy it out right, but you're definitely inflicting damage to it en masse, making it crack under the ever-increasing pressure of all the good Karkat has brought into your lives. __Resourceful, competent, passionate, blessing. As the words wear down that dark other, they're also healing the wounds their opposites inflicted. Not perfectly, there're still scabs and scars left behind and always will be, but he's no longer hemorrhaging out or in screaming agony because of them. __Defender, capable, inspiring, encouraging. _

Now their positions have switched, with KK the one who's strong and standing while the shadow succumbs to the onslaught and bleeds. Not quite strong enough to stand completely on his own, but you're still strong enough to help him get where he needs to be. You both tower over what's left of that lingering fear, and as much as you want to burn it away with all the force still left in you, it's still Karkat's horror and he's the only one who can ultimately destroy it. He stares at it long enough that you're half afraid that you managed to help too little too late. Then his lip curls in the familiar scowl of disdain as he reaches out and flicks the final word at the thing with vehement force.

_Accomplished__._

It shouldn't be so satisfying to watch something explode.

For awhile after, all either of you can do is sag against each other. You know you should be trying to get him moving, pulling him if necessary back to the physical world because god knows how long you've really been at this and whether or not there's still enough of Gamzee's sanity left to bring him back around to. The most you manage is to just hang on, tired and drained and vaguely wondering if you still have a functioning body to eventually return to yourself. Sooner than later, though, he's able to pull away from you, just enough to get a good old fashioned KK death glare going.

_"Sollux, get the fuck out of my head."_

You can't help it; a raspy chuckle forces itself out and whoa, holy fuck, that hurts like hell, so you must not be dead yet either. That worry now sorted out, you decide to be contrary and pull him back to you. _"Only if you come with me."_

_"Where the hell else am I going to go, fuckass?" The question makes you both flinch even as relief for the return of that stubborn snark floods through as well. It's still way too early to make jokes like that. Karkat looks moderately ashamed to have said it in the first place. __"I'm… I'll follow. Get out of here before you really do die and I'm left with your ghost in my think-pan for the rest of this miserable fucking escapade."_

He might be left with an afterimage whether he wants it or not, given the stains of yellow you've left here and there in your effort to defend him. That's a problem for later, when you're not so exhausted and strung out. Slowly, you start pulling yourself back, as much to make sure he's following you back out as it is because you lack the simple power to reconnect any faster. He doesn't fuss at you too much about the how long the process takes. Everything is starting to repair itself now that his core self is functioning again. It'll take time to truly recover, but it's an uplifting thing to see nonetheless. The two of you teeter and wobble back to the very edges of consciousness, where he gives you one last, gentle shove out of his mental space.

The pain is actually enough that you kind of wish you'd died. There's a headache that's threatening to split your head in half crackling between your horns. You've got blood steadily running from your nose and ears and have for a while given how light-headed and nauseous you feel. Movement makes you groan in pain, only it's not so much a groan as it's a wheeze that turns into a cough that's horribly wet and makes your chest seize up. Oh, you tore yourself up good this time, but it's worth it to feel that blast furnace that's your friend and leader wrap his hands around your face and force you to look up. It takes a little too long to focus in on him.

"All right, asshole," he starts when you can finally give him your attention. "We're going to have to move together, so don't you fucking dare pass out on me. I'm not dragging your half-dead carcass anywhere."

Any energy that might have gone into replying has to get spent on getting you back to your feet (Feet? Why the fuck do you have to have feet right now? Oh, yeah, because you'll probably die if you try levitating yourself anytime in the near future.), so the most you manage to get across is a hiss. KK makes it up for you, swearing under his breath as you both struggle upright, nearly dragging one other back down again in the process. You're really pretty numb by the time you're slowly moving through the halls, all the pain receptors in your body finally overloaded to the point of shut-off. Shambling is probably the best way to describe how the two of you work your way up the rainbow road Gamzee's painted through the labs. At least the dark things seem to have stopped pouring out of everywhere because honestly, there's no way either of you could do more than you already are. You're sure there's a significance to the fact that you find the juggalo amid the impressive wreckage of some machine, you just can't figure it out at the moment. You're also pretty sure he's completely lost it at this point, but the moirail magic clicks in as soon as Karkat starts his shooshing routine. Gamzee instantly curls up around him which is just fine with you because that means you no longer have to be standing. The floor is very nicely not moving even if the rest of the room is spinning around.

Mission accomplished. Disaster averted. You pass out.

X-X-X

You can always tell when you've managed to really screw yourself up because this is where you end up. A gently forested area, long sweeping grass on a hill, and the red of a set sun still painting the horizon line—it used to be your favorite spot. It was just so different than the communal hive stems that went on for as far as the eye could see. Different smells, different sounds, different flow to time. Not really a place you could live, but a place that felt good to visit and get away from the normal things for a while.

At least, until you woke up with a headache that made you want to tear out your own horns and the lingering, sparking sweetness of mind honey on your tongue.

There's three parts to a normal mind, but normal minds aren't meant to hold the power of a psionic as strong as you are. You actually have four, the conscious, the subconscious, and the self, plus this place which is a sort of holding area for when your mind is active, but your body isn't able to function yet. At least, that's how it functions from this perspective. You're pretty sure this is actually where all of the emotional backlash feeds into the mental distortion of your powers. It's the place that keeps you going even when you don't want to anymore, where the voices that speak of death whisper on a nonexistent wind, and all the jacked-up hoofbeast shit lingers over the top of all the best things in your life. In short, it's your own personal hell.

Like any scab that you can't help but pick at because the pain fascinates you, you sit up on the hillside and, yup, there's the smoking ruins of Aradia's hive, just like you remember it. Sharp, stinging pain lances through your arm. There's no reason to really look at it anymore, you know what it says, how long it will bleed, what it will take to get it to heal over again, yet you look anyway. What's the point of hurting yourself if you don't look at the destruction, after all?

It's carved into your forearm, _murderer, just like it's been carved a hundred thousand times before, highlighted in your goldenrod blood that always flows so neatly out of the wounds that the word remains unmistakable. That pain lights up about a dozen others in places you're not used to having them. The type of pain is different, too. It radiates, carrying a sting far beyond the initial wound site, and it lingers, fluctuating in intensity, though never truly dissipating. After a little bit of uncomfortable contorting, these newer wounds prove to be burns. Most are simply angry welts raising the skin, but a couple blistered. Remnants of words not meant to harm you specifically, yet found enough purchase to hurt anyway. Failure was never something that scared you. It could be frustrating, disheartening, enraging even, but never frightening. You knew you'd be able to do what you needed to do and very little mattered beyond that._

"_Fuck. And I thought I liked to torture myself."_

A part of you wants desperately to be surprised by the fact that there's now another voice here with you. A very small part is glad that voice isn't screaming here too. The rest of you is simply too tired to feel much of anything, barely flinching when _liiarrips through your side._

"_Everyone's got scars, KK," you respond blithely as you put your shirt back on. The worst ones you bear are on your shoulders and back, things that tend to seep constantly rather than sealing and tearing back open. You don't feel particularly interested in sharing them more than you already have._

He's painfully normal when you finally look to him. Maybe a little more relaxed than you usually see him. His shoulders aren't hunched and those perpetual dark circles around his eyes are the lightest you ever remember them being. He's got that look on his face; the one that says he wants to say something sympathetic yet can't find a way to be obnoxious about it so that you'll take it. You find a moment of envy for the long sleeves of his shirt that effectively hide all the damage you know he's still recovering from.

Karkat looks away first, but the new focus of his attention isn't that much better. "_Is that…?"_

"_Yes." Another wince as the word carves in deeper. You turn to try and hide it, but it's pretty much impossible. He's already seen it._

"_It wasn't your fault."_

"_No. It wasn't." He looks startled that you agreed so readily. You sigh. You've had this argument with so many people by now, you just don't want to fight about it period. Maybe, though, because he's here, he'll understand what you're trying to say. You hold your arm out. "__That doesn't change the fact that I bear the responsibility for it. I have always been the one responsible, not for the intent, but for the action itself. It's just a simple fact, KK. It wasn't my fault; I'm still the one who killed her."_

"_Murderer implies intent, bulge-sucker," Karkat spits back. "__Whose fault is it when I'm playing with my sickle and catch the blade instead of the handle? Yeah, it cut me, but that's what it's supposed to do. It's not the weapon's fault that I'm an idiot. And that's all you were, a weapon, a means to an end, as invested in the outcome as a lump of steel with an edge. **You didn't do anything, intentional, unintentional, or otherwise.**_

_"But…I can understand why you'd still think something stupid like that."_

He's very studiously looking everywhere but at you, trying too hard to act nonchalant about the whole thing. He might have even been able to pull it off, too, if he'd stop fidgeting, his fingers drumming on his crossed arms as he shifts back and forth on his feet. The pain in your arm is receding. The bleeding has stopped even though it has yet to seal itself back up. You can't help but smile at that. It's not even his pain and he still tries (succeeds) to make it better. Sometimes you think he's better at wielding words than he is his sickles, always able to say what you need to hear without making either of you weak in the process. It's probably the main reason you've remained friends as long as you have.

And now he's here, a voice in your head, where only the dead ever talk…

Pain shoots through your other arm with enough sharpness that you yelp despite yourself. Not the pain of your burns or the other words that split or crack, but the slow incising of a new word into your body. It washes over you, hot, liquid, lighting up all the connective abrasions until you feel dizzy and sick. You hug your arm to your stomach, trying to staunch the pain and the blood, curling over it until you end up a ball on the ground that's nothing more than agony. You thought you'd grown numb to this kind of pain. Obviously, you thought wrong.

"_Jesus fuck, Captor." Karkat's got his hands on you, trying to pry you out of the pile of misery you've quickly become. He's warm, which only reinforces how cold you are, how much you want to cling to it, to him. But you also don't want him to see this, how much it hurts to know you gave everything and still couldn't save him. Doesn't matter—in your current condition, you can't fight him off. The fresh wound is exposed as the last few letters start to appear. It's torture, having your arm pressed into the ground, held tight and still as muscles and tendon jump reflexively with each new cut. Karkat uses his own body to block yours, keeping you from folding over this new hurt, watching the process no matter how much you don't want him to._

You're breathless by the time it finally stops, disoriented and trembling and wishing you could just pass out properly instead of having to lay in this fucked up part of your head and hurt like this. When you stop fighting him, Karkat gentles his hold. Actually, it's probably shock on his part more than anything, given how his eyes are wide and his mouth is open to say something, but hasn't actually made a sound yet. You can't really blame him for it. He did just watch an invisible knife deliberately cut the word _betrayer into the hitherto unmarred skin of your opposite forearm._

"_I'm sorry…" It burbles out of your throat without thought, followed by that little throb as more blood pushes out of your newly ruptured skin. "__I'm so sorry, KK…"_

That seems to snap him back. Slate grey eyes narrow down at you. "_What. The actual. Fuck. Is this."_

It isn't said as a question. You lack the will to fight him about it, though. "_I was supposed to save you. Gamzee fucking called me out to do it. But if you're here, then I obviously didn't, and now you're dying. The one thing I should have been able to do to help you and I—"_

"_Whoa. Back up." He actually puts a hand over your mouth to stop you. "__No one's dead, nookstain. You certainly gave it your best fucking shot, though. Gamzee and I had to haul your ass half way across the goddamn meteor, by the way, so you better be fucking grateful we didn't leave you where you oh-so-conveniently decided to pass out. We got you cleaned up and resting in a pile, and then you started making this weird as fuck noise in my head. I touched you and then I was here. End of story."_

A noise. How could he hear… That's right. You had left smears of your blood behind when you dove into his mind, left a little bit of yourself behind inside him. And in your fury and haste, you hadn't shielded yourself, had poured all of your mental self into what you were doing…which had left you covered in his blood when you had pulled him down and tried to protect him from himself. Of course the mental impression Karkat created would be bigger, stronger, more defined than the one you'd left behind. The pain recedes, leaving you rather numb in the wake of everything.

"_This is fucking stupid, even for you." Karkat's voice as gone soft, but his grip on your arm has tightened. "__Why the hell would you even think something like this? **How could you? You waltzed in and made me look like a fucking chump in my own goddamn head, for fuck's sake. You pulled enough of everyone else in to get the damn voices to stop, and then took the next step by trying to save me from myself, like you couldn't resist rubbing in the fact ****you had to save ****me. And now you want to pull this self-incrimination shit? Well, fuck you, Sollux, right up your bifurcated ass, because if you think I'm just going to roll over and die without doing anything to set the record straight, then you're an even bigger douche than I gave you credit for. Suck it up, fucknub; you're not getting out of payback so easily. Because this, this is utter ****shit."**_

His hand clamps down on the wound and angrily wipes it away. It should have hurt, and it doesn't. The whole thing should have torn open to the bone, and it didn't. Blood should be gushing from your arm, and it isn't. There's nothing, no wound, no scar, and barely any trace of blood left along the stretch of skin between your wrist and your elbow. KK's still glaring at you, though, a tale-tell red rimming his eyes.

"_Don't you dare use me as a weapon against yourself," he snarls.__ "Hate yourself all you want, you lisping son of a bitch, but don't you dare use me to hurt you. Otherwise, I **will hurt you, and this little foray into self-mutilation will be a fucking joy by the time I'm done with you."**_

The hot anger is scalding as it pours over you, warming you back up, and you're vaguely surprised not to see steam rising. Your body starts to relax. Your thoughts start flowing again. And then you really can't help yourself. After a tirade like that, it comes as naturally as breathing. "_Jeez, KK. If you wanted a black date that badly, you could have just asked in the first place."_

There's a moment of shock, then he's sitting up and scowling. "_Ridiculous. You've absolutely fucking gone off the deep end, haven't you? Why the hell do I even bother…" His grumbling only makes you snicker harder, but you know he's pleased by the result because he keeps egging you on. It's only then that you realize you've missed this. The teasing, the baiting, the arguing. He's been too busy being the leader and you've been too busy trying not to be involved. The utter normalcy of the situation finishes warming you up. Your body finally unfolds, allowing you to sit up. He watches you with a mixture of annoyance and relief. "__Are we done yet?" he asks petulantly. "__Because dealing with your insanity is fucking exhausting and I don't know how to get back."_

You grin and lurch forward, grabbing him. First, he swears at you because of the action, then he swears at you because there's nothing solid around you anymore. He does a full body cling as you bring the both of you back to consciousness, idle threats trailing behind like vapours. It's easy to find his point of contact and while you're tempted to just hurl him back in the right direction, you're also in a good enough mood to be nice about the process. Once you convince him to uncling, you set him on his way with an even gentler push than he gave you out of his mind, watching until your sure he's made it before ascending the rest of the way yourself.

The room you wake to isn't one that you recognize immediately. It hurts to breath, your head is steadily throbbing in time with your blood pusher, and you're laying on something that's soft enough your spine feels stretched out like taffy. Shifting hurts, but it's then that you feel claws digging lightly into your hand. Your head turns a bit to see Karkat laying next to you, watching you intently. He looks even more exhausted than he usually does, with dried splatters of blood still clinging to his pale gray skin. Gamzee is asleep on his chest, snoring away with little honks at the end of each breath, one of Karkat's hands buried in his hair, absently stroking to keep the sleeping easy.

"Are we still friends?" he asks quietly, nearly whispering, and you think that's all the sound he can manage right now in the waking world.

"Yeah, KK. We're still friends." You squeeze his hand. "Thanks."

He finally relaxes a bit, eyes drifting closed. "_Anytime, fuckass," rings in the back of your mind, and for the first time, having a voice there doesn't seem like a bad thing._


End file.
